Belief

My dear friend Debbie told me that she had gotten into an argument about the differences between “belief” and “faith” and “perspective.”

Perspective has two senses.  In the sense of “Well, from my perspective…” then, yeah, it’s closely related to a belief because it’s an admission of subjectivity.  But there is an objective sense of the word, as in “From my perspective, I can’t see inside my neighbor’s apartment from inside mine and from her perspective, she can’t see inside my apartment from hers.”  So, there’s subjective perspective (in the realm of ideas) and objective perspective (in the realm of physics.)

I think belief and faith are clearly related because faith is what fills any gaps between evidence which allows a belief to be believed.  But that’s what makes me think that belief is a choice:  you’re choosing to augment facts with faith.  It’s that element of choice which makes it something quite different from an objective perspective.

Are my senses reliable enough to have a truly objective perspective?  Perhaps not, but I’ll assume that they are until I have evidence to the contrary.  Animals wouldn’t survive long if their senses weren’t at some gross level objectively accurate most of the time.